Translation - EnglishImmeasurable landscapes extend to the curvature of the Earth.
Reaching the top is a sensation hard to convey with words, because It’s a matter of getting into one’s stride and breaths remain hanging from the sky so much powerful all around.
It’s the same for mountains as for projects: it’s very difficult to explain them with words.

With images is different.
Images can do more, better.

The insight by Montura, who for years has been clothing ideas, bodies and aims of those who are explorers by nature, is to think that photography can function as a lens for magnifying the multiple ways the sport can transform young kids, center them, ground them, balance them, tie them together. Not only. At the foundation of his work there’s the idea that with images one can describe a certain icyness, piercing to the eyes, or that moment when we sit on wooden benches, waiting to drink something hot. It’s the idea that photography can convey how the body assimilates the movement and brings itself downriver, absorbing and studying inclinations.

From this well-entrusted faith in the image, able to fix sporty gestures, is born “Moon Landing”, natural extension of Montura’s “Searching a new way” series of books. Montura has placed 4 professional reporters side by side kids of "World Schools’ Championship 2010” in Folgaria, Lavarone, Luserna, in Trentino Alto Adige. He wanted this professionals to communicate through images something that has been lived with limbs and cloud-shaped breaths in the cold, with red noses and cheekbones, purple bruises, big laughs of these young athletes.

Giovanni Cocco has used his tool as a paintbrush to portray them. Daniele Lira has followed them through the movements of their breaths, in their seemingly unnatural poses. Luca Catalano Gonzaga has been there, among laughs and words uttered under the scortching sun reflected on the snow, warm hands despite coldness, élan vital. Francesco Zizola has brought the lunar into the terrestrial, has shaken the white, transforming it into a sensation of retinal impact, dense and etherial at the same time.

They are cold, these pictures, when all they want to communicate is frost, wind, snow, plonks beneath the skiis, quite vibrating strokes, screaming knees. They become burning hot when they outline prompt lungs, souls and muscles of these kids joining the "World Schools’ Championship 2010”.
Lenticular cloud images, they embroider in our mind the pleasure of competing in the contest, the Greek motto "I excel if you excel", and by consequence, that healthy competition, putting your back and knees into it, of aerodynamic-positioned bodies and ready ankles.

A difficult project. Just like progressing on thick snow, skiis in hand.
But these photographers have been there, in a state of tension, tending towards… the same way the athlete’s, the skier’s and the climber’s eye directs itself toward an unknown learning, present in landscapes as in inner thoughts.

Discipline and aesthetics try to converge. There’s the art of watching and catching, fused to the art of feeling, competing, having fun, growing up.

A difficult project. And yet, the photos seem to be functioning, like some huge landscapes or some “catchers in the rye” in the act of becoming adults, extending to the curvature of the Earth.

Sperm whales are easily recognized by their massive heads and prominent rounded foreheads. They have the largest brain of any creature known to have lived on Earth. Their heads also hold large quantities of a substance called spermaceti. Whalers once believed that the oily fluid was sperm, but scientists still do not understand the function of spermaceti. One common theory is that the fluid—which hardens to wax when cold—helps the whale alter its buoyancy so it can dive deep and rise again. Sperm whales are known to dive as deep as 3,280 feet (1,000 meters) in search of squid to eat. These giant mammals must hold their breath for up to 90 minutes on such dives.
These toothed whales eat thousands of pounds of fish and squid—about one ton (907 kg) per day.
Sperm whales are often spotted in groups (called pods) of some 15 to 20 animals. Pods include females and their young, while males may roam solo or move from group to group. Females and calves remain in tropical or subtropical waters all year long, and apparently practice communal childcare. Males migrate to higher latitudes, alone or in groups, and head back towards the equator to breed. Driven by their tale fluke, approximately 16 feet (5 meters) from tip to tip, they can cruise the oceans at around 23 miles (37 kilometres) per hour.
These popular leviathans are vocal and emit a series of "clangs" that may be used for communication or for echolocation. Animals that use echolocation emit sounds that travel underwater until they encounter objects, then bounce back to their senders—revealing the location, size, and shape of their target.
Sperm whales were mainstays of whaling's 18th and 19th century heyday. A mythical albino sperm whale was immortalized in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, though Ahab's nemesis was apparently based on a real animal whalers called Mocha Dick. The animals were targeted for oil and ambergris, a substance that forms around squid beaks in a whale's stomach. Ambergris was (and remains) a very valuable substance once used in perfumes. Despite large population drops due to whaling, sperm whales are still fairly numerous.

Wolves are legendary because of their spine-tingling howl, which they use to communicate. A lone wolf howls to attract the attention of his pack, while communal howls may send territorial messages from one pack to another. Some howls are confrontational. Much like barking domestic dogs, wolves may simply begin howling because a nearby wolf has already begun.
Wolves are the largest members of the dog family. Adaptable gray wolves are by far the most common and were once found all over the Northern Hemisphere. But wolves and humans have a long adversarial history. Though they almost never attack humans, wolves are considered one of the animal world's most fearsome natural villains. They do attack domestic animals, and countless wolves have been shot, trapped, and poisoned because of this tendency.
In the lower 48 states, gray wolves were hunted to near extinction, though some populations survived and others have since been reintroduced. Few gray wolves survive in Europe, though many live in Alaska, Canada, and Asia.
Red wolves live in the south-eastern United States, where they are endangered. These animals actually became extinct in the wild in 1980. Scientists established a breeding program with a small number of captive red wolves and have reintroduced the animal to North Carolina. Today, perhaps 100 red wolves survive in the wild.
The maned wolf, a distant relative of the more familiar gray and red wolves, lives in South America. Physically, this animal resembles a large, red fox more than its wolf relatives.
Wolves live and hunt in packs of around six to ten animals. They are known to roam large distances, perhaps 12 miles (20 kilometres) in a single day. These social animals cooperate on their preferred prey—large animals such as deer, elk, and moose. When they are successful, wolves do not eat in moderation. A single animal can consume 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of meat at a sitting. Wolves also eat smaller mammals, birds, fish, lizards, snakes, and fruit.
Wolf packs are established according to a strict hierarchy, with a dominant male at the top and his mate not far behind. Usually this male and female are the only animals of the pack to breed. All of a pack's adults help to care for young pups by bringing them food and watching them while others hunt.

Some stars behave as if it's better to burn out than to fade away. These stars end their evolutions in massive cosmic explosions known as supernovae.
When supernovae explode they jettison matter into space at some 9,000 to 25,000 miles (15,000 to 40,000 kilometres) per second. These blasts produce much of the material in the universe—including some elements, like iron, which make up our planet and even ourselves. Heavy elements are only produced in supernovae, so all of us carry the remnants of these distant explosions within our own bodies.
Supernovae add enriching elements to space clouds of dust and gas, further interstellar diversity, and produce a shock wave that compresses clouds of gas to aid new star formation.
But only a select few stars become supernovae. Many stars cool in later life to end their days as white dwarfs and, later, black dwarfs.

STAR FUSION

But massive stars, many times larger than our own sun, may create a supernova when their core's fusion process runs out of fuel. Star fusion provides a constant outward pressure, which exists in balance with the star's own mass-driven, inward gravitational pull. When fusion slows, outbound pressure drops and the star's core begins to condense under gravity—becoming ever denser and hotter.
To outward appearances, such stars begin growing, swelling into bodies known as red super giants. But at their cores shrinking continues, making a supernova imminent.
When a star's core contracts to a critical point a series of nuclear reactions is unleashed. This fusion staves off core collapse for a time—but only until the core is composed largely of iron, which can no longer sustain star fusion.
In a microsecond, the core may reach temperatures of billions of degrees Celsius. Iron atoms become crushed so closely together that the repulsive forces of their nuclei create a recoil of the squeezed core—a bounce that causes the star to explode as a supernova and give birth to an enormous, superheated, shock wave.

WHITE DWARFS

Supernovae also occur in binary star systems. Smaller stars, up to eight times the mass of our own sun, typically evolve into white dwarves. A star condensed to this size, about that of Earth, is very dense and thus has strong enough gravitational pull to gather material from the system's second star if it is close enough.
If a white dwarf takes on enough mass it reaches a level called the Chandrasekhar Limit. At this point the pressure at its centre will become so great that runaway fusion occurs and the star detonates in a thermonuclear supernova.
A supernova can light the sky up for weeks, and the massive transfer of matter and energy leaves behind a very different star.
Typically only a tiny core of neutrons, a spinning neutron star, is left to evidence a supernova. Neutron stars give off radio waves in a steady stream or, as pulsars, in intermittent bursts.
If a star was so massive (at least ten times the size of our sun) that it leaves behind a large core, a new phenomenon will occur. Because such a burned-out core has no energy source to fuse, and thus produces no outward pressure, it may become engulfed by its own gravity and turn into a cosmic sinkhole for energy and matter—a black hole.

GIANT BARB

Sometimes called the "king of fish," the giant barb has a storied history in its Southeast Asia range. In Vietnam, this distinctive, large-headed species is called cá ho. In Cambodia, the barb appears in ancient temple carvings at Angkor and has been named the national fish.
The giant barb is a river fish that often frequents deep pools but may move seasonally into canals or river floodplains. Juveniles are often seen in swamps or smaller river tributaries.
Though they've been known to reach 660 pounds (300 kilograms), specimens above 220 pounds (100 kilograms) have become exceptionally rare in recent years. These massive fish sustain their bulk on tiny plants such as phytoplankton as well as algae, seaweed, and, during periods of high water, the fruits of submerged terrestrial plants.
Scientists fear that cá ho populations have declined to the point where few survive to reach the age of sexual reproduction. This fish has become severely threatened along its native range, which stretches from Cambodia to the Mekong Delta, because of water pollution, river traffic, and especially overfishing pressures.
The flesh of the giant barb has long been considered a delicacy among residents of the Mekong River Basin, and it is a popular eating and pickling option for the tens of millions of people who depend on the Mekong's aquatic fauna for food.
Government programs have focused on captive breeding in an attempt to save this regional icon. Young giant barb can become acclimated to pond life and may be suitable for farming.